


Self Portrait

by ThistleBrows



Category: LXG, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 05:36:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10960785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThistleBrows/pseuds/ThistleBrows
Summary: Henry Jekyll needs some way to fill his time, post-movie. He turns to a new hobby and reflects. A brief oneshot.





	Self Portrait

Henry sat in the lounge, trying to decide what to draw.

He found that the lounge was a good spot to spend time alone and draw. The light of the wall sconces was calm, and unlike other areas of the ship, provided a softer yellow light. Although the ship was underwater, it felt like an evening, the kind where one sits in a chair at a fireplace after having eaten a large supper.

Henry had been working his way up these past few weeks, drawing various objects within the Nautilus. He wasn’t very good, but his work wasn’t terrible either. What he drew was identifiable, objects or people. Mostly he drew objects. On the few attempts he’d made to draw people in the ship, they’d noticed him. He had to gesture apologetically and hurry away, embarrassed. Afterwards, he only drew images of people from the books in the library.

This didn’t stop him from trying. Drawing, Henry found, was how he started to notice the world again. It required one to observe and simulate textures and surfaces, angles and lighting. He’d spent so much time looking inward, that drawing forced him outward. He’d even taken to carrying his notebook and pencil with him. Edward mocked him for it, but Henry observed one day that Mina and the Captain had glanced over his supplies approvingly. Henry even had the feeling that the ship’s crew was starting to associate him with his drawing hobby rather than other things.

Ship life had been quite uneventful during the journey back, and Henry had found that he needed a hobby. The members of the League kept to themselves, with only occasional interactions. Edward had taken to sleeping, as Henry had so few interactions with others for Edward to mock him over that he’d grown bored.

Henry looked over into the mirror on the wall. Edward was still asleep. Henry remembered that before Edward existed, whenever he used to stare into the mirror, he felt that his face never quite looked like his own. Different angles and days revealed different versions of himself, and none of them ever looked like him. In a way, he wasn’t sure he ever knew himself. Now looking into the mirror presented him with a new degree of dissonance.

He surveyed Edward’s features. It was strange to notice that in some respects, they shared the same face. It was to be expected, but it nevertheless reminded him of how he used to feel looking at his own face.

Henry began to draw Edward, starting with the eyes. They were the same eyes as his. The same color, the same shape. The nose, too. It was in the outer areas, the brow, chin, jawbone, which differed. But the core features were the same. He could see how Edward came from him. Albeit the evil side, he was still part of a whole. That meant Henry wasn’t a whole person. He was only half a man. And he often felt like it these days, Henry noted ruefully to himself.

The process of drawing relaxed him. It was the sound of the pencil scratching the paper and the calm lighting that lent to an environment for reflection. It was in contrast to his days as a student, when he would sit outside and draw with somewhat hopeful and childish pretensions of impressing those around them. Now he drew to occupy himself, practice careful observance of objects, and to think.

After some time working on it, Henry felt the drawing was complete. It wasn’t a bad likeness. It was not completely accurate, yet unmistakably Edward. Looking at it in full, he could point out different parts of the drawing where he had to spend time observing the ear or perhaps the hairline. He knew Edward’s face more carefully than before. More than he would have previously been comfortable with. But now, he felt as though, through drawing it, he’d taken ownership of the face. His face. It was his face, after all. He and Edward were two different beings, yet also the same. Or at least, they came from the same source: from a man, whom, Henry was becoming more sure he no longer was.

Henry now, was nothing like the man he was during his student days or even prior to the experiment. Not only in terms of how sociable he used to be, but also confident. He was more careful now, more humble- to the point where he often slipped into self deprecation. His sense of self, which had been, compared to now, so easily assured, was now battered and well worn. But for that, he felt, he was stronger. Or at least, he is now that he’s had time to recover from the batterings. He likened himself to muscle tissue, in that he needed time to recover after exercise in order to become stronger. Maybe he should take some time to draw human musculature, he mused.

Glancing back at his drawing, he noticed he could see himself inside it. He looked into the mirror to look at Edward. He saw himself there too, where before he did not. Or would not. For all Edward’s brutish features and the presumable retaining of Henry’s own after the experiment, the two of them weren’t simply two halves of a whole. At least, not anymore. They were different people, in of themselves. They’d changed. And yet, who they were was still deeply intertwined with who the other was. Did that mean they were still the opposing forces of good and evil? Or were they now something else? Nevertheless, staring at the image was perhaps the first time that Henry felt like he was really seeing something of himself.

Before he could continue his introspection, Edward stirred in the back of Henry’s mind. _What’ve you drawn now?_ Edward asked somewhat irritably as he woke. Upon seeing the drawing, he paused. Henry could feel that he didn’t know how to react, but he was impressed. All he said to Henry though was, _You’ve been watching me sleep. Hrm. Draw yourself next time._

Looking down at the picture, Henry smiled to himself.

“I just have.”


End file.
